English books from Albania
Recommended English books written by authors from Albania (15)
Travel the world without leaving your chair.
If you speak English here are some English books from Albania for the next part of the "Read Around The World Challenge".
1.
Broken April by Ismail Kadare EN
Description:
Gjorg is a young mountaineer who (much against his will) has just killed a man in order to avenge the death of his older brother, and who expects to be killed himself in accordance with the Code that regulates life in the Albanian highlands. A young couple on their honeymoon has come to this place to study its age-old customs-including the blood feud. In Broken April, Ismail Kadare intersects the fates of both Gjorg and the young couple with visions of an unending cycle of obligatory murder and the horrifying effects it has on their respective lives. "Dostoevskian in its dark vision."--Kirkus ... continue
2.
Chronicle in Stone by Ismail Kadare EN
Description:
Masterful in its simplicity, Chronicle in Stone is a touching coming-of-age story and a testament to the perseverance of the human spirit. Surrounded by the magic of beautiful women and literature, a boy must endure the deprivations of war as he suffers the hardships of growing up. His sleepy country has just thrown off centuries of tyranny, but new waves of domination inundate his city. Through the boy’s eyes, we see the terrors of World War II as he witnesses fascist invasions, allied bombings, partisan infighting, and the many faces of human cruelty—as well as the simple pleasures of life. ... continue
3.
Description:
...a magical parable of love, death and the power of familial bonds. -Stephen Salisbury, New York Times Book Review
4.
Elegy for Kosovo by Ismail Kadare EN
Description:
This battle established the Muslim foothold in Europe and became the centerpiece of Serbian nationalist ideology, justifying the campaign of ethnic cleansing of Albanian Kosovars that the world witnessed with horror at the end of the past century. In this eloquent and timely reflection on war, memory, and the destiny of two peoples, Ismail Kadare explores in fiction the legend and the consequences of that defeat."--BOOK JACKET.
5.
Free : A Child and a Country at the End of History by Lea Ypi EN
Description:
For precocious 11-year-old Lea Ypi, Albania’s Soviet-style socialism held the promise of a preordained future, a guarantee of security among enthusiastic comrades. That is, until she found herself clinging to a stone statue of Joseph Stalin, newly beheaded by student protests. Communism had failed to deliver the promised utopia. One’s “biography”—class status and other associations long in the past—put strict boundaries around one’s individual future. When Lea’s parents spoke of relatives going to “university” or “graduating,” they were speaking of grave secrets Lea struggled to unveil. And wh... continue
6.
Negative Space by Luljeta Lleshanaku EN
Description:
*Shortlist for the Griffin International Poetry Prize* "Language arrived fragmentary / split in syllables / spasmodic / like code in times of war," writes Luljeta Lleshanaku in the title poem to her powerful new collection Negative Space. In these lines, personal biography disperses into the history of an entire generation that grew up under the oppressive dictatorship of the poet's native Albania. For Lleshanaku, the "unsaid, gestures" make up the negative space that "gives form to the woods / and to the mad woman--the silhouette of goddess Athena / wearing a pair of flip-flops / and an owl o... continue
7.
Spring Flowers, Spring Frost by Ismail Kadare EN
Description:
As spring arrives in the Albanian mountain town of B-, some strange things are emerging in the thaw. Bank robbers strike the National Bank. The ghastly Kanun, regulator of medieval Albania's blood vendettas, is dredged up from the shipwreck of history. An
8.
Sworn Virgin by Elvira Dones EN
Description:
Independence in the Albanian mountains means a vow to become a man--independence in America means reclaiming her womanhood.
9.
The Fall of the Stone City by Ismail Kadare EN
Description:
From the Man Booker International Prize winner comes a story of the great city of Gjirokaster and of a secret meeting that may have changed the face of Europe in the twentieth century
10.
The General of the Dead Army by Ismail Kadare EN
Description:
The General of the Dead Army is a moving and timely meditation on war and its consequences by the winner of the inaugural Man Booker International Prize, available again in paperback. Twenty years after World War II, an Italian general—armed with maps, measurements, and dental records—is sent to Albania to recover the remains of his country’s fallen soldiers. A quarrelsome priest joins him, and in rain and sleet they dig up the Albanian countryside—once a battlefield, now a graveyard—checking teeth and dog tags, assembling a dead army in pine-box uniforms. In addition to the brutal weather, th... continue